ICANN is arguably the Internet's supreme governing body.
So its meeting in Sydney from the 21st-26th June is an opportunity to see the inner workings of Internet governance at close hand.
And certainly there are some issues on ICANN's agenda whose resolution could prove very significant for the future of ecommerce and online businesses everywhere.
A proposal to extend domain names into non Latin characters, for example, could open the door to email and web addresses in Chinese or Arabic characters.
The proposal is referred to as Internationalized Domain Names or IDN's and will certainly be discussed at the upcoming Sydney meeting.
So too will the proposed liberalization that would enable anyone to set-up their own top level domain. Instead of dot.com, you could pay the $150,000 plau fee to ICANN and have your own domain, e.g. dot.coke, or dot nike, or dot paris etc.
Thats why ICANN is important, and seeing as it only meets 3 times a year, the Sydney meeting is a rare opportunity to be up close and personal with ICANN.
There is no charge to attend, so get online and register if you're interested.
Head to http://syd.icann.org
Friday, May 29, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
Aussie retailers are ecommerce dummies says Daniel Petre
Australian retailers' ecommerce incompetence is part of the reason why News Ltd cash-box, Netus, has partnered with US online retailer, CSN Stores to set-up Buyster.
So said former Microsoft executive and Netus co-owner, Daniel Petre, in the AFR this morning.
Buyster is a local knock-off of CSN. It is using the exact same approach that, in just six years, has built the US company into a business with $US200million in annual sales.
Or in other words, Buyster is setting a range of online stores targetting niche markets, and using the same centralised online infrastructure.
In the US the company has more than 200 online stores, including luggage.com.
In Australia Buyster has already opened four online shops; lighting, barstools, mountsandstands and kitchenware. Office-chairs will be the next to come online.
According to Petre, Buyster is a joint-venture with CSN and one of just five investments that Netus has made since it was set-up a few years back.
For more information see our upcoming eCommerce Report story at www.ecommercereport.com.au or go to www.buyster.com.au
Thursday, May 21, 2009
eCommerce Report now on Twitter
You can now talk to us via our Twitter account - our Twitter name is ecommerceau.
So you can follow us by Twitter if you like.
We're not sure whether this will be useful to our readers or not, but we're keen to see what all the fuss is about.
I plan to post ( or tweet, as they say) our latest weekly email update.
And anything else that feels useful or relevant.
Let me know what you think, whether it works for you, or whether its just information overload.
So you can follow us by Twitter if you like.
We're not sure whether this will be useful to our readers or not, but we're keen to see what all the fuss is about.
I plan to post ( or tweet, as they say) our latest weekly email update.
And anything else that feels useful or relevant.
Let me know what you think, whether it works for you, or whether its just information overload.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Evolve not intended to replace existing payment gateways says CBA
Australian businesses connected to the Commonwealth Bank for the processing of their Internet credit-card transactions will not have to replace their existing payment gateways with the bank’s new eVolve service.
Dominic White, the CBA’s general manager of merchant solutions said that the service is being offered to new merchant customers and to those looking to accept credit-card transactions online.
“”Merchants who’ve already integrated a gateway into our MasterCard Internet Gateway service, using products from Dialect or SecurePay or eWay, for example, won’t need to change”, he said.
“This is more about being able to offer a simpler product, including an online shop-front, to merchant customers looking for that sort of solution.”
White said the genesis of the eVolve service dated back about two years ago, when the CBA went to the market.
“We contracted MasterCard who in turn contracted Premiere Technology to do the development work.”
“But some of our guys have virtually lived at Premier in Melbourne for the past two years” he said.
White said there were a small number of merchants using a product developed by CardLink to support batched IVR transactions that might be asked to migrate to the new service.
For more information go to
www.commbank.com.au/evolve
Dominic White, the CBA’s general manager of merchant solutions said that the service is being offered to new merchant customers and to those looking to accept credit-card transactions online.
“”Merchants who’ve already integrated a gateway into our MasterCard Internet Gateway service, using products from Dialect or SecurePay or eWay, for example, won’t need to change”, he said.
“This is more about being able to offer a simpler product, including an online shop-front, to merchant customers looking for that sort of solution.”
White said the genesis of the eVolve service dated back about two years ago, when the CBA went to the market.
“We contracted MasterCard who in turn contracted Premiere Technology to do the development work.”
“But some of our guys have virtually lived at Premier in Melbourne for the past two years” he said.
White said there were a small number of merchants using a product developed by CardLink to support batched IVR transactions that might be asked to migrate to the new service.
For more information go to
www.commbank.com.au/evolve
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Australian Online credit-card fraud up again in 2008
Official statistics released last Friday show that Australian online credit-card fraud was significantly higher in 2008 than in the 2007.
Overall credit and charge card fraud increased to a rate of 53.2cents in every $1000, up from 44.7cents in 2007.
Most of this is believed to involve online credit-card fraud.
But the publicly published statistics don't break down the figures into separate online and other categories.
So calculation of how much Australian online card fraud has increased is not possible in these figures alone.
However the statement issued by the Australian Payments Clearing Association (APCA) along with the statistics clearly points the finger of blame online.
"The increases in Australia's credit and charge card fraud were driven by increases in Card-not-present fraud and Counterfeit/Skimming, which continued to trend upward in 2008."
APCA CEO, Chris Hamilton, said that the industry is taking steps to address the problem by implementing initiatives such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCIDSS).
And he said that banks and card companies are helping by giving online consumers additional security passwords under MasterCard's SecureCode and the Verified by Visa.
Overall credit and charge card fraud increased to a rate of 53.2cents in every $1000, up from 44.7cents in 2007.
Most of this is believed to involve online credit-card fraud.
But the publicly published statistics don't break down the figures into separate online and other categories.
So calculation of how much Australian online card fraud has increased is not possible in these figures alone.
However the statement issued by the Australian Payments Clearing Association (APCA) along with the statistics clearly points the finger of blame online.
"The increases in Australia's credit and charge card fraud were driven by increases in Card-not-present fraud and Counterfeit/Skimming, which continued to trend upward in 2008."
APCA CEO, Chris Hamilton, said that the industry is taking steps to address the problem by implementing initiatives such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCIDSS).
And he said that banks and card companies are helping by giving online consumers additional security passwords under MasterCard's SecureCode and the Verified by Visa.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Nick Bolton's Bottle Domains in more trouble
The domain name smarties at Nick Bolton's Australian Style have done it again - stuffed up, that is.
Over the weekend they attempted a bulk transfer of some twenty thousand customers domain names from one of Nick's accredited registrars to another.
The move was no doubt pre-emptive, and intended to forestall any loss of customers when Nick's domain name registrar business - Bottle - loses its accreditation from industry regulator, Au Domain Administration Ltd (auDA).
That may not happen next week, or even next month.
But happen it will, because Bottle undoubtedly covered up the fact that its systems were hacked into back in 2007.
That put Bottle in breach of its accreditation agreement with auDA, and left both looking silly earlier this year when the hacker was caught selling Bottle's customers credit card details online.
So Bottle is going down, even if Nick has been able to forestall it in the Victorian Supreme Court for a while.
Moreover the attempt to save customers from going elsewhere has also failed miserably.
auDA blocked the transfers, and has now locked down all Bottle's customers' names.
See the official announcement at www.auda.org.au
Over the weekend they attempted a bulk transfer of some twenty thousand customers domain names from one of Nick's accredited registrars to another.
The move was no doubt pre-emptive, and intended to forestall any loss of customers when Nick's domain name registrar business - Bottle - loses its accreditation from industry regulator, Au Domain Administration Ltd (auDA).
That may not happen next week, or even next month.
But happen it will, because Bottle undoubtedly covered up the fact that its systems were hacked into back in 2007.
That put Bottle in breach of its accreditation agreement with auDA, and left both looking silly earlier this year when the hacker was caught selling Bottle's customers credit card details online.
So Bottle is going down, even if Nick has been able to forestall it in the Victorian Supreme Court for a while.
Moreover the attempt to save customers from going elsewhere has also failed miserably.
auDA blocked the transfers, and has now locked down all Bottle's customers' names.
See the official announcement at www.auda.org.au
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Au eTailers get special daily news service
Online retailers in Australia have been poorly served by local publishers and conference/event organisers.
We found that out for ourselves a couple of years back with our Onlineshop2007 event.
There just wasn't any single channel we could find to cost-effectively promote the event.
And similarly, we found it difficult to find anyone who was writing or commenting on news and developments affecting the local online retail sector.
Two years later however, and the situation is much better.
Only today we stumbled across a new daily service from Octomedia which is dedicated to local online retailing. You can find it at www.etailtoday.com.au
Another with publishing aspirations in this area are the boys up on the Gold Coast putting together a mega online retail event in Sydney later this year.
Their site at www.online-retailer.com.au suggests they're attracting plenty of local industry support, and good luck to them.
Overseas, of course, there are numerous online publishing effort devoted to online retailing,
Shop.org in the US springs readily to mind and www.imrg.co.uk is also impressive.
I also like a new site I stumbled upon today called www.ecommercepodcast.com.
We found that out for ourselves a couple of years back with our Onlineshop2007 event.
There just wasn't any single channel we could find to cost-effectively promote the event.
And similarly, we found it difficult to find anyone who was writing or commenting on news and developments affecting the local online retail sector.
Two years later however, and the situation is much better.
Only today we stumbled across a new daily service from Octomedia which is dedicated to local online retailing. You can find it at www.etailtoday.com.au
Another with publishing aspirations in this area are the boys up on the Gold Coast putting together a mega online retail event in Sydney later this year.
Their site at www.online-retailer.com.au suggests they're attracting plenty of local industry support, and good luck to them.
Overseas, of course, there are numerous online publishing effort devoted to online retailing,
Shop.org in the US springs readily to mind and www.imrg.co.uk is also impressive.
I also like a new site I stumbled upon today called www.ecommercepodcast.com.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
PayPal to launch local developer/partner programme
PayPal has announced it will be launching a new Certified Developer and Partner Programme down-under.
The announcement, dated 28th April 2009, released by PR company - the De Wintern Group, said that the programme would "recruit developers and solution providers to help meet the growing demand for online payments outside of the retail sector."
I'm not sure what this says about the four local Certifed PayPal developers already listed on the company's website at https://www.paypal-portal.com/developer/directory/#Asia%20Pacific
Maybe they don't work outside of the retail sector. Or maybe PayPal feels a new special breed of payment gateway developer is needed to deal with non-profit businesses.
In any event PayPal is also promising new tools and resources specifically for local non-profits.
Apparently a localized version of the web-site template service offered by US company, Blackbaud will be released down under later this year. It will be called BlackBaudNow.
The announcement, dated 28th April 2009, released by PR company - the De Wintern Group, said that the programme would "recruit developers and solution providers to help meet the growing demand for online payments outside of the retail sector."
I'm not sure what this says about the four local Certifed PayPal developers already listed on the company's website at https://www.paypal-portal.com/developer/directory/#Asia%20Pacific
Maybe they don't work outside of the retail sector. Or maybe PayPal feels a new special breed of payment gateway developer is needed to deal with non-profit businesses.
In any event PayPal is also promising new tools and resources specifically for local non-profits.
Apparently a localized version of the web-site template service offered by US company, Blackbaud will be released down under later this year. It will be called BlackBaudNow.
Friday, May 01, 2009
New certified eBay Educators (CeE) program down-under starting a little late
eBay Australia's new Certified eBay Educator program is a little late in starting. When the company announced the new program back on the 24th March, it said it would be launched in April.
"The exam, logos, certificates, contracts and other relevant materials will be available from mid April"
Thats not happened but I'm sure the launch can't be too far away.
Thats because whats going to be offered will be, compared to the former the Education specialist programme run by the American Research Institute's PowerU division, much simpler and cheaper.
If you've got a feedback score of more than fifty, all you'll have to do is complete a free online exam.
To register your interest in becoming a trainer all you have to do is email the Sydney based market research company who is running the program - Stokes Mischewski
ebay_educator@stokesmischewski.com.au
I reckon this is a good move by eBay Australia. Thats because selling on eBay isn't hard once you figure out a few things.
But the complexity of the previous programme, its expense and the numerous changes at eBay in recent times have all helped to prevent regular training courses for newbies being offered by commercial providers.
What do you reckon? Is it a good idea? And will it make a difference? Are Stokes Mischewski the reight people to be running this? And why is it running late?
"The exam, logos, certificates, contracts and other relevant materials will be available from mid April"
Thats not happened but I'm sure the launch can't be too far away.
Thats because whats going to be offered will be, compared to the former the Education specialist programme run by the American Research Institute's PowerU division, much simpler and cheaper.
If you've got a feedback score of more than fifty, all you'll have to do is complete a free online exam.
To register your interest in becoming a trainer all you have to do is email the Sydney based market research company who is running the program - Stokes Mischewski
ebay_educator@stokesmischewski.com.au
I reckon this is a good move by eBay Australia. Thats because selling on eBay isn't hard once you figure out a few things.
But the complexity of the previous programme, its expense and the numerous changes at eBay in recent times have all helped to prevent regular training courses for newbies being offered by commercial providers.
What do you reckon? Is it a good idea? And will it make a difference? Are Stokes Mischewski the reight people to be running this? And why is it running late?
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